Congressman wants safeguards for privacy; targets NDAA.

The House of Representatives has approved an amendment to the draconian National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that will limit the Department of Defense from using data collected by unmanned spy drones against Americans.

The Amendment, introduced by Congressman Landry (R-LA), will prohibit information collected by DoD drones without a warrant from being used as evidence in court.

The amendment, was approved early Thursday afternoon along with 19 other en bloc amendments, reads:

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, information acquired by an unmanned aerial vehicle operated by the Department of Defense may not be admitted in a Federal court, State court, or court of a political subdivision of a State as evidence against a United States citizen unless such information was obtained by such unmanned aerial vehicle pursuant to a court order.”

Landry’s amendment is an important one given that a recently uncovered Air Force documentcontends that the Pentagon can use drones to monitor the activities of Americans.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet.

Editor’s Note: Steve Chapman is on vacation. The following column was originally published in February 2008.

“Death tugs at my ear and says, ‘Live, I am coming.’” Were Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. alive today, he might ascribe that line not to death but to nuclear terrorism.

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, Americans have had to live with the knowledge that the next time the terrorists strike, it could be not with airplanes capable of killing thousands but atomic bombs capable of killing hundreds of thousands.

The prospect has created a sense of profound vulnerability. It has shaped our view of government policies aimed at combating terrorism (filtered through Jack Bauer). It helped mobilize support for the Iraq war.

Why are we worried? Bomb designs can be found on the Internet. Fissile material may be smuggled out of Russia. Iran, a longtime sponsor of terrorist groups, is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. A layperson may figure it’s only a matter of time before the unimaginable comes to pass. Harvard’s Graham Allison, in his book “Nuclear Terrorism,” concludes, “On the current course, nuclear terrorism is inevitable.”

But remember: After Sept. 11, 2001, we all thought more attacks were a certainty. Yet al-Qaida and its ideological kin have proved unable to mount a second strike.

CONTINUED at Reason.

Defense Secretary re-affirms Obama administration’s unconstitutional stance.

Following controversy over his assertion that seeking “international permission” from the UN to launch wars trumps the authority of Congress, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta re-affirmed this premise during recent testimony in which he again stated that Congress would play second fiddle to the international community.

Asked by Congressman Walter Jones, who has launched a resolution re-affirming the limits to Presidential power by making the launching of war without Congressional approval an impeachable offense, whether President Obama would seek authorization from Congress before attacking Iran or Syria, Panetta stopped short of answering in the affirmative.

“We will clearly work with Congress if it comes to the issue of the use of force,” said Panetta, backing away from comments made in March when he told a Senate Armed Services Committee, “Our goal would be to seek international permission. And we would come to the Congress and inform you and determine how best to approach this, whether or not we would want to get permission from the Congress.”

However, Panetta later told Congressman Randy Forbes during the House Armed Services Committee meeting, “The commander in chief has the authority to take action that involves the vital interests of this country,” adding that the President would have to “take steps” to get Congressional approval under the War Powers Act.

“Would the approval be required before you could take military action against Syria?” asked Forbes.

“The President could in fact deploy forces if he had to if our vital interests were at stake,” said Panetta.

“So you get the support of Congress after you began military operations?” asked Forbes.

“In that particular situation, yes,” said Panetta, re-affirming that Congressional authorization would not be needed.

CONTINUED at Prison Planet.

Opponents of a U.S. law they claim may subject them to indefinite military detention for activities including news reporting and political activism persuaded a federal judge to temporarily block the measure.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan yesterday ruled in favor of a group of writers and activists who sued President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Defense Department, claiming a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law Dec. 31, puts them in fear that they could be arrested and held by U.S. armed forces.

The complaint was filed Jan. 13 by a group including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges. The plaintiffs contend a section of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to people engaged in hostilities against the U.S., such as al-Qaeda.

“The statute at issue places the public at undue risk of having their speech chilled for the purported protection from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ‘associated forces’ – i.e., ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’” Forrest said in an opinion yesterday. “The vagueness of Section 1021 does not allow the average citizen, or even the government itself, to understand with the type of definiteness to which our citizens are entitled, or what conduct comes within its scope.”

CONTINUED at Bloomberg.

Nato’s plans to upgrade the US’s estimated 180 tactical nuclear weapons in western Europe are unnecessary, expensive and likely to exacerbate already difficult relations with Russia, according to a report.

The alliance is preparing to replace “dumb” free-fall nuclear bombs and ageing delivery aircraft with precision-guided weapons that would be carried by US F35 strike aircraft, according to a report from the European Leadership Network (ELN), a thinktank supported by former UK defence ministers including Lord Des Browne and Sir Malcolm Rifkind.

The report, Escalation by Default?: the Future of Nato Nuclear Weapons In Europe, is by Ted Seay, who until last year was arms control adviser to the US mission at Nato headquarters in Brussels.

CONTINUED at The Raw Story.

Israel will not be invited to NATO’s May 20-21 summit in Chicago, the alliance’s top official said Friday. But he denied that alliance member Turkey had blocked Israel’s participation.

Instead, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the reason is because Israel does not participate in NATO’s main military missions.

News reports have claimed that Turkey blocked Israel’s participation because of the raid in 2010 by Israeli troops on ships heading to Gaza in which eight Turks and a Turkish-American died.

NATO has a system of partnerships with dozens of nations across the globe such as the Mediterranean Dialogue, a NATO outreach program with seven friendly nations, including Israel.

In the past, partner nations did not usually attend the alliance’s summits. But Fogh Rasmussen said 13 would do so this time.

CONTINUED at ABC News.

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.

This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they build one, they probably built more.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder woman and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa. The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect–what, fake plots? In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives.

CONTINUED at Activist Post. Written by Paul Craig Roberts.

Colombia’s Chamber of Representatives has approved a bill that would legalize the cultivation of drugs that grow as plants, bringing to fruition the start of more legislative drug reform efforts to come, as promised by South American leaders during the recent Summit of the Americas.

Colombia’s drug crop legalization bill would make growing marijuana, opium, coca and poppies legal, but drug trafficking, including sales, would remain a severe crime, according to Colombia Reports.

The U.S. is a strong ally of Colombia’s and the Obama administration has provided military support to the country, even going so far as to station U.S. soldiers and drone aircraft at Colombian military bases, ostensibly to help combat drug trafficking networks. The country has historically been a key U.S. asset in the region, so much that they’ve even accepted prior U.S. administrations sending aircraft over Colombian poppy and coca fields to spray the indigenous population with herbicide.

CONTINUED at The Raw Story.

It’s true, superhero movies are generally not known for their adherence to strict reality. No surprise there, though I’d say it could be argued that Marvel has actually done a passable job of finding real-world ways and reasons for its heroes to possibly exist (Thor obviously excluded).

But in an angle that I freely admit I would never have anticipated, when the Pentagon chose to withdraw its support for Marvel’s THE AVENGERS due to its “unreality” they were actually referring to SHIELD any not any of the super-powered beings found therein.  “We couldn’t reconcile the unreality of this international organization and our place in it,” said Phil Straub, the Defense Department’s Hollywood liaison.  “To whom did S.H.I.E.L.D. answer? Did we work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? We hit that roadblock and decided we couldn’t do anything with the film.”

As an example: while the humvees which show up at the end (driven by members of the National Guard) were used in cooperation with the Defense Department, any of the military planes seen on or around the Helicarrier (“F-22 Raptors and what looked like F-35 Joint Strike Fighters”) were all inserted digitally as the military refused to provide real ones.

To be fair, Marvel has been suitably murky as to just what SHIELD is in the world of the movies – not that they have to explain everything away by any means, but is it an American governmental agency that has authority over America’s military, or is it a more international organization created via a sort of ”United Nations Security Council resolution” uses American military equipment on loan? Without answers to these questions, all Straub could do was decide “It just got to the point where it didn’t make any sense.”

Source: JoBlo.